Stevenson rallies past St. Charles North in 2nd half
St. Charles North drained four 3-pointers to take a 16-11 lead at the end of the first quarter in the first game of the 37th annual Komaromy Classic Thursday at Dundee-Crown and looked ready to break the contest wide open.
Stevenson, the North Stars' opponent, made defensive adjustments that St. Charles North was unable to counter. As result, the North Stars only managed three treys the rest of the way and dropped a 54-46 decision.
St. Charles North moves into the consolation bracket and will play South Elgin on Friday. The Storm dropped a 53-37 decision to New Trier. The Trevians and Patriots advance and will face each other in a quarterfinal Friday.
"It seems to be a trend for us lately," said St. Charles North coach Mike Tomczak. "We come out with a solid game plan, we execute and then when another team makes an adjustment, we are not making that secondary adjustment."
"They kind of punched us in the mouth in the beginning," Stevenson coach Ashley Graham said. "We settled in nicely, especially in that second half."
Four St. Charles North players sank baskets from beyond the arc in the first eight minutes.
"We talked a lot about how to switch out on the shooter and to prevent that slip up from happening. Just digging in and getting stops on defense and not allowing them to get those open looks from three," Graham said. "Really, it was the person setting the screen that was popping hard and we weren't defending well so we just made a few adjustments."
Leilauni Chanthaboury sank the only North Star (5-3) 3-pointer in the second quarter with 4:47 left in the period. The senior guard led the North Stars in scoring with 12 points.
"Typically it's a question of physicality. Teams really get up on us and pressure us and we have been shying away for some time now from that," Tomczak said. "They were pressuring us higher and taking away the 3-point line. That's fine because the natural counter of that is to take the ball to the basket. We weren't willing to do that, we were shying away from contact."
Talia Pellegrini followed Chanthaboury's trey with a layup to widen North's lead to 12 points with four minutes left in the half.
Stevenson (8-2) closed out the quarter with a 9-1 run to trail 25-21 at halftime. Ava Bardic ignited the spurt with one of her four 3-pointers. Bardic tallied a game-high 17 points.
Stevenson took its first lead, 28-27, at the 3:04 mark of the third quarter on base line layup by Simone Sawyer (13 points).
North Star Emma Nawara (9 points) tied the game at 31 just before the end of the third quarter.
The Patriots jumped back in front for good at the start of the fourth quarter on a pull up jumper by Avery King (11 points). The bucket started a Stevenson 16-5 run to put the game away.
"I think our offense got on track because of our defense and our transition," said Graham. "They are in a zone, but we are five attackers so we talked about getting it to the rim, attaching the seams of their zone."
Tatum Settelmyer scored 11 points for the North Stars.